Author Information: Heather Gladney

Gladney was a college student in San Diego in 1978 when the saga of Naga first crept into her brain -- while she was gardening, of course.

"I was re-landscaping my parents' yard at the time, so there was a lot of time to think," she said. "This image popped up, and when I had a break, I rushed in and wrote it down. The story just kept splitting off and yeasting, getting bigger."

When she graduated from UC Davis two years later, the Naga saga "was just big piles on the kitchen table annoying my roommates," she recalled. "I kept coming up with new scenes, which would force rearrangements, so I was forever trying to figure out where different chunks fit together."

Gladney worked on making the stacks into a coherent draft while working for a tree company in Kansas in 1981. Her mother typed out two full notebooks of scribbling, and Gladney put together the first full draft when recuperating from knee surgery in 1983. The final draft went to an agent in '85, and 18 months later the first book was published. When Ace Books called with the good news, Gladney presumably was the only employee at the Davis lumberyard with a publishing credit on her resume...
Before catching on full-time with DOR [Division of Recycling] Gladney was a temp for Kelly Services. She had worked, among other places, for DOR, CGS and McGraw Hill, where she helped grade standardized math, science and English tests. It was a challenging job -- particularly scoring essay questions."They'd scan the tests in, and then we'd try to read the writing and determine what it was they were trying to say," she said.
"I came away impressed that the teachers were able to teach them..."

-from an interview/bio by Don Drysdale

Gladney's fiction works not yet entered on IBList include:

Teot's Warning, 1989 (libretto of a musical with Tim Randles--selections staged in minor venues, incl. Eclecticon Science Fiction Convention) and the following short stories:

"Blessed Event", Dead of Night, 1994

"Be Careful What You Ask For", Midnight Zoo, 1991

"Season of Sorrows", with Jannie Wurtz, Elfquest Against the Wind, Vol.4, Tor, 1990

"A Devotee of Conscience", Pandora, 1988

A series of her articles on soil mixes was published in African Violet Magazine in 1985.